Monday, October 29, 2012

Magic Truffles, or How to Turn a Kitchen Failure into a Kitchen Success

Last few days of MoFo! A lot of us are still standing! We rock, people. We rock.

Do you ever wonder why I love every recipe that I blog about? That's because if I don't love it - I don't blog it. I don't like telling you about something that didn't work out, because many times things don't work out because of a user error, or sometimes different people with different taste buds like different things. I simply don't like to criticize recipes because I know how much work goes into creating them. However when we're talking about my own recipes, I will gladly tell you if something absolutely sucked! Last Saturday I made two individual pumpkin tarts. They were inedible.

It doesn't really look that bad, right? Wrong! It was horrid. It looks frozen here because after I tasted a bite of one of the tarts and gagged, I decided to toss the other one in the freezer as I did not want to see it anymore. Mr. Wing-It claimed to like it and he ate the one that I had already tasted. Mkay. I think he was just trying to be nice.

I do not like throwing away food, and I think I thought of Wing It Vegan's new slogan thanks to these horrendous tarts: there aren't many kitchen disasters that cannot be turned into either a sweet truffle or a savory croquette! Here's what happened to the extra tart: (please excuse the poorly taken windowless-kitchen pictures)

I threw the whole thing into the food processor and blended it into a smooth-ish cream!

At this point, it looked like vomit. Then I added some melted dark chocolate and processed some more...

Tasted it, added even more chocolate, a splash of vanilla and almond extracts, and processed some more until I was satisfied...

Satisfied! Then I shaped it into balls after it had firmed up in the fridge for a few minutes, rolled them in ground chocolate chips and...

That's Bob in the background. Hi Bob!

Et voilà, magic truffles! I wasn't about to throw away a whole little tart made with expensive ingredients like walnuts, cashews, almonds, and maple syrup. Throwing away food causes me pain! So there you have it. If next month you (if you live in the US) happen to ruin your Thanksgiving pie or whatever you might be making for dessert - add some melted chocolate and turn the disaster into delicious balls! And then don't tell anyone about your kitchen misfortunes and pretend that you always intended to make fancy truffles! Mwahahaha!

Now I shall leave you with a gratuitous picture of Curly grooming his butt feathers. *curtsies*

According to a wise soul of the interwebs whom I consulted when we first brought Bob home, he is an arrowhead plant. What I don't know is if he is a White Butterfly arrowhead vine or what the fork! He didn't have a little identification card thingie when we bought him. I just knew he had to come home with me whatever he was.

So glad to see you posting more again, and those truffles LOOK amazing!

Just a quick note, I can't always get to your posts because the images hang the update in my inbox. It always says something about pinterest, but I'm also not sure if it is because your photos are so large.

Well done. This could be the title of a post I haven't gotten around to writing yet where I botched a pie crust and baked the pie with just the topping. Tried to turn the botched crust into chocolate chip cookies and burned them, wasting not just the crust but the added chips Grrrrrrrrr.

It's always frustrating when a recipe doesn't work out (especially when it looks that good) -- and I'm the same way when it comes to wasting food. I'm glad you were able to salvage it and turn it into something so great!

Welcome to Wing It Vegan! I am River and this blog is where I keep track of my favorite recipes. Hopefully you will find some new favorites here as well! Please, don't run away scared if you're not vegan! I promise I won't throw rotten beets or snarky judgments at you. MORE